Summers here!! Well, I say summer - its July at least. And its raining. Again. As it has been for almost everyday for the last few weeks.
Although our part of Ol'Blighty isn't flooded like many poor sods (we really feel for you - we would be devastated if it happened to us), the soil has been classed as 'mud' for weeks now. This has somewhat hampered our efforts in just about everything, as well as making us thoroughly miserable. We are now hoping that the weather will improve and give us a late Summer that stretches the nice warm days into October. This will at least give us time to finish this years projects and still take some time to fully enjoy our garden, our lifestyle choices and all that it brings us.

Its also been another month things have been busy as hell and I've not had time to post anything on here. Oh well - here goes - ill try to remember everything.

First up, a break from the smallholding and gardening for some sad news. As many of you know I also have a deep fascination with wildlife and the natural world. 10 years ago my brother asked me for some advice, and took in a very sick iguana named Bandit. Iguanas are notoriously difficult to keep in captivity, but my brother met the challenge and built him a huge tank, sorted out his correct diet and provided him with a comfortable environment to live in. For the last 10 years, bandit has been a fantastic family pet and a constant source of fun, fascination and wonder for anybody visiting my parents house. Unfortunately, despite my brothers best efforts, old age finally claimed Bandit earlier this week. Considering the condition he was in when he was rescued, I think my brother did an amazing job in bringing him back to health and providing a good quality of life, and I want to take this opportunity to say you made me proud with what you managed to do. RIP Bandit.

Now, on with the reason this blog exists and what you came here to read about....

The Chooks. Everything going good finally. Loads of eggs (4 or 5 most days) with people now starting to buy our excess. Only problem this month has been the wet weather mixed with the heat of summer - once again the chicken run is a sticky mud bath, but this time its also starting to reek a bit due to the heat. Have plans to board the bottom 8 inches and filling it up with wood shaving, but I cant do anything until the weather improves.

Fruit crop. Have been eating loads of strawberries, raspberries and loganberries, and there are more ready to be picked every few days. Blackberries, black currents and red currents are also coming along nicely. Hoping we get some nice hot summer days soon so my grapes ripen - this is the first year I've allowed the vines to bear fruit and they are covered in loads of little bunches - I need some nice dry days so I can trim the vines back and cut out some of the bunches - at the moment there are too many for the vines to support and ripen (especially if the weather does not improve)

The great carrot plan. As you know (or will if you have read previous blog entrys) we are trying different methods of growing our carrots this year. Already we had planted some straight in the ground, then we had made shallow trenches and filled these with nice soft compost. Both of these are meeting with limited success - we don?t know if its due to some bad seed or the unseasonably bad/cold/wet weather, but germination has been very poor, and although we have some carrot sprouting through, we have a lot of gaps in the rows where nothing is happening. Bring on the final part of the great carrot plan - METHOD NUMBER 3!
We cut a load of empty toilet roll tubes in half, filled them with compost, and planted the seeds in these. We then bunged the whole lot in the mini-greenhouse and these have been doing nicely and seem to have a much higher germination rate than those we planted straight outside. In a few weeks we will plant them out into the vegie bed. To avoid disturbing the plants and attracting carrot fly, we will plant out the complete toilet roll pot. Over the time it takes the carrots to grow the pot should naturally break down into the soil.

Carrots in bog-roll tube plant pots ready for the greenhouse.

The Raised Beds. Things have generally been progressing well with the vegetable growing. For the first time ever, all over cauliflower came through and grow some nice big fluffy white heads. Due to the extremely heavy rain, these were all in danger of 'blowing', so the OH has harvested, blanched and frozen the entire lot - there loads of it, so we should have a decent supply to keep us going for a while. We also have loads of nice big cabbages too. We have managed to keep the caterpillars and slugs at bay this year (much to the distress of the chickens which seemed to revel in being fed the slug-ravaged remnants last year). We also have some rather unexpected but welcome additions to the raised beds - loads of extra tomato plants have sprung up. Would appear that either some survived in last years compost or the horses that 'provided' our manure enjoyed a few tomatoes in there diet. Either way, we are happy to let them grow - makes the vegie bed look a little more interesting too - random tomatos plants popping up between lettuce, cabbage etc

The main raised bed. You can just see the small narrow bed to the right of the picture, and the grapes vines growing up the fence at the back

On the kitchen front. We got on with some wine bottling. We have got loads and loads bubbling away in cupboard from last years fruit, and most of it is now ready. A few taste tests while we cleaned and sterilised the bottles, and then we topped up 6 bottles of raspberry, strawberry and loganberry and 12 bottles of blackberry. A few of these have already been drunk and, hangovers aside, they are very, very nice.

And finally. Despite the bad weather we have managed to make some headway with returning the garden to a more useable state. Thanks to Pete The Lodger, the patio is finished. We may need to move and reset some of the slabs later in the year (due to laying them very hurriedly in the rain), but the new concrete is down and the patio area is usable again. OH has been patiently continuing to paint the fence and as you will see from the photo's we have gone for what we think is a great eye-catching blue. We think it adds a nice bit of colour and fun to our home, and all the green plants growing against it look great.
 

Our final act of defiance (or stupidity or desperation - you choose which seems more appropriate) against the weather this month was to plant our small lawn area. I wont be surprised if the rain washes all the seed away and sod all ever grows again (it really is that wet), but we had to try and got bored waiting weeks and weeks and weeks for a decent dry period.

Well, thats about it for now. let all hope that summer arrives soon.